Terrorvision: “We are not robots, we are still just four Herberts from Bradford.”

If there is one thing guaranteed to put a smile on the face of most British rock fans then it has to be the news that Terrorvision are back! Yorkshire’s finest rockers are back with a new album and a UK tour. Returning this week with their new album, We Are Not Robots, their first since 2011’s Super Delux, the four mates from Bradford are back to put a spring in everyone’s step.

For our latest Cover Story, V13 sat down with bassist Leigh Marklew to discuss why the band went away, why the returned, their new album, growing old, and to get the true story behind their biggest hit “Tequila.”

Hi Leigh, you mentioned you have just come back from holiday, so thank you for talking to me at such short notice…

Leigh Marklew: “It’s my pleasure. I have the pleasure of speaking to people who still want to speak to us. It’s good.”

I did speak to Tony last year and highlighted to him that one of my very first I think my very first concert was a Terrorvision concert at the London Astoria of all places. Now I’m chatting to you, it almost feels like full circle. Now, last year felt like a bit of a return after you played a couple of shows and then you announced the new album, We Are Not Robots. Now it feels like you’re fully back. What made you guys as a band one, decide to record a new album and two, to come back? I don’t think you ever went away necessarily, but it was quiet. I think that is the best way of putting it…

“Well, we did go away. I’ll hold my hands up, we kind of knocked it on the head and went to do other things, and then came back, did a bit more, then got frazzled, and then left it for a year or two. I guess that we got to a point, where we did a tour with Reef and The Wildhearts on a bit of a package tour back in 2018 and that was a lot of fun. We enjoyed that and then the year after I think we did another of those tours where you play an entire album.

So we did How to Make Friends, 20th anniversary, 25th anniversary or something, with a 25th anniversary in 2019. Those shows just fly out, everybody loves anniversary shows because it’s like nostalgia, it’s remembering your youth, it’s remembering the 90s and all that was good about that. But, after that, we thought, you know what, we don’t want to just keep doing this kind of thing all the time and so we started writing some new material. If only for our own benefit, if only for us to, not relieve the boredom, because we always love playing live, but just to mix it up a bit so that we get to play some new stuff, either live or even just in the rehearsal studio.

“Everybody loves anniversary shows because it’s like nostalgia, it’s remembering your youth, it’s remembering the 90s and all that was good about that…”

We started and then obviously lockdown happened, so it was delayed a bit and then we got stuck into it and we just slowly tapped away without anybody expecting anything or any labels or anybody demanding anything different to back in the day. We just started to get enough songs together. We got about 20 songs together and demoed them but that was almost two years ago when we got those finished then we had a bit of a hiccup because our drummer jumped ship and plays with Ugly Kid Joe now, of all people.

That was only a minor blip because we put somebody in his place straight away. A guy called Chris Bussey, who I’ve known for 20 years. He played in a little band that I put together after Terrorvision called Malibu Stacey. He’s a great drummer, great person, great musician, and he’s been an absolute godsend for the band in that he’s brought a really good dynamic to it. When he came on board, at first we just said, ‘Do you want to sit in for a couple of gigs while Cam was going to go off and play with Ugly Kid Joe for a while?’, Anyway, he stayed in and we said, ‘Do you want to be in the band?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, I’d love to.’

He’s always loved Terrorvision. Then we just got straight to work, finishing off the songs, then recorded them all last year so, even though the album is just about to come out next month and we’ve already previewed a few singles ahead of it, it’s been done and in the can since about October or November of last year. We’re itching to get it out there and have people hear the full 12 tracks.”

I’ve heard a couple of the tracks and they hit my nostalgia itch there. This is Terrorvision, but it’s a new Terrorvision. I do want to ask though, the title, We Are Not Robots, where did that name come from? I saw that, and I was like, Yeah, I kind of feel like a robot sometimes if I’m honest.

“Absolutely. I suppose it talks about four, let’s say, middle-aged fellas, grappling with today’s world. To be more specific, it was Mark the guitarist who just came up with it. We started to think about album titles and stuff like that, and there were a couple of pretty lame suggestions, I guess. Then, he just came in with, not only the title but the sleeve concept and everything in one go. He just says, ‘How about something like this?’

All four of us immediately went, ‘We like that.’ It just resonated with all of us straight away. We worked it up and worked the sleeve up and we really like it. It feels like we are not robots, we are still four Herberts from Bradford who are just kind of knocking it out, just like we knocked it out in a rehearsal room in 1988, four blokes, instruments, drums, singing and that’s it.”

V13 – MagazineCover – Issue63 – Terrorvision

You mentioned that there were some not-so-great titles, could you tell me some of them or is that just not the cards?

“I can’t remember ’em. They were so bad. If I could, I would but…”

They were that memorable…

“They just weren’t memorable and I think that’s why Mark’s suggestion hit home straight away.”

Now that we are older, wiser, whenever I hear an album from my youth, I’ll go to the mirror and look and see lines and all that. Now that you’re older and wiser, do you have a different approach to recording albums and even life on the road when you’re touring?

“I think we do out of necessity. Our approach to life on the road, our approach to life during the 1990s was hedonistic, to say the least. I don’t think as men in their fifties, apart from Chris the drummer who is younger than us, we could actually cope with that now. We look after ourselves a little bit more. We have to take a different approach. It’s not water and chanting all around, and healthy food but the level of partying had to be toned down a bit or else we wouldn’t be here.”

I can relate. I gave up drinking two years ago because it was getting too much. I’m in my early forties myself so I suppose it does catch up with you. It’s a bit scary…

“Number one, good for giving up drinking, I’ve never managed that, but we don’t hit the heights that we used to do. We all look after ourselves in different ways. Myself and Mark took up exercise massively to try to slay those demons and keep fit, anything to get you keeping on a level so well done on your effort to keep it.”

I think your 20-year-old self would take one look at you now and go, What happened? I’m still rocking. I’m still good. We just do it slightly differently. You mentioned earlier, that Terrorvision have a new drummer with you now. Terrorvision has pretty much had a consistent lineup right from the beginning, give or take the most minor changes, what’s your secret to this? How have you guys stayed so tight-knit? What’s kept you guys together?

“We were mates. The band wasn’t put together in the first place in 1988, the band was already together. Me and Shutty went to school together, and then I went to college with Mark, he joined, and then we met Tony in the pub, and he joined. We did it because we loved rock n’ roll music. We loved playing rock music. We loved listening to it. We used to hang out together, We were a little gang, and it’s never changed really.

We’ve changed. We’ve grown up and done different things but, still, at the core of it is, is mates with a shared passion for the kind of music that we want to play which sometimes makes it really hard because we are close and we’re not just a put-together studio project, you know? Another thing, right from the off, we split everything four ways so there’s not one guy that’s driving around in a Ferrari while everybody else is broke.”

“We did it because we loved rock n’ roll music. We loved playing rock music. We loved listening to it. We used to hang out together, We were a little gang, and it’s never changed really. ”

I remember when you mentioned the Ferrari, that brings me back to a video you released for Regular Urban Survivors and one line that you said about fast cars. I don’t know why I remembered that but it twigged in my brain back to the VHS days. Now, with the new album ready to drop, is this a sign that there’s more to come?

“I hope so, I really hope so. Everybody’s got hugely different lives now, we cannot afford to do this full-time. It’s a passion that we do amongst lots of other things, and long may it continue as long as we’re having fun. We needed this new stuff to re-inject some fun and some interest and some kind of engagement with it from us, so I hope so. The initial reaction to everything has been really positive. I guess we do some of these dates in September and a few more next year. If we feel it, if we get that buzz off the audience and we get that bug playing these new songs there will definitely be more.”

Do you have a favourite track off the record? Something that speaks to you personally?

“We’re up to four songs that we’ve previewed already, and what we wanted to do with the first two, ‘Electrocute’ and ‘Lemon,’ was to just say, boom, you know, we’re still a rock and roll band here. ‘Tequila’ was an anomaly. We’re a rock band, then we’ve got progressively groovier, a bit more poppy with the latest one but, honestly, this sounds shitty, but I like them all.

Recording this album was so much fun. It was so easy. It just went so quickly and so easily and then it was just a case of building it up. You know what it’s like when you’re in a band, you have different favourites on different days. There’s a track on Side Two… Side Two… because we’re actually doing vinyl and a cassette. Can you believe it? Unbelievable. There’s a track on Side Two which is one of those more mellow ones called ‘Don’t Spoil Tomorrow,’ and I don’t know why I like it, but I really like that one.”

I was going to say that’s in the vein of ‘Some People Say’?

“I don’t think it’s as moody a rock ballad as that. It’s a bit more chilled, a bit sort of, dare I say it, bluesy/country. Don’t take that in the wrong way. About as country as Terrorvision, but it’s not. It’s just, what would I say, a bit more of a Creedence Clearwater-type vibe, than country. So that’s pretty cool. ‘Lucifer’ I like. That means a lot to me. There’s quite a lot of my stamp on that tune.

What else have we got? There’s a song called ‘Magic.’ That takes your head off. ‘Daydream’ is another song I think people will like. A lot of people have already said what they’ve heard already, it reminds them of classic Terrorvision, even early Terrorvision, which is not something that we were aiming to do. We never aimed to do anything with Terrorvision. It’s really difficult for us to manufacture a set of songs. It’s just what comes out. It’s another eclectic bunch of tunes from us.”

Final question for you. Very important. ‘Tequila,’ does it still make you happy?

“It never did, you know? I don’t know if you know the story of ‘Tequila,’ or why the song came about. It came about after a night drinking the stuff in Spain, resulting in Tony breaking both his ankles such is the effect of that bastard drink on the human spirit. So no, it’s never made me happy. It’s made me incredibly drunk. It’s made me forget whole periods. I think it paid the bills for a few years, for a couple of years at least, but, you never regret anything, do you? It’s a little pocket of our history. It certainly doesn’t define us, but now the drink can do one as far as I’m concerned.”

Terrorvision are currently on tour around the UK. Pick up their new album We Are Not Robots then head out to one of the remaining shows listed below.

Tour Dates:

09/24 – Leeds – Project House
09/25 – Bristol – The Fleece
09/26 – Wolverhampton – KK’s Steel Mill
09/27 – Stockton-On-Tees – Georgian Theatre
09/28 – Aberdeen – The Lemon Tree
09/29 – Glasgow – Slay

Terrorvision “We Are Not Robots” single artwork